


8AM School Commute

by arteriole



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety, Ghosts, I don't know how to tag this, Major Original Character(s), My First AO3 Post, One Shot, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Original Universe, Small Towns, Social Anxiety, yuragi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 11:06:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18777010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arteriole/pseuds/arteriole
Summary: My first AO3 upload.Short story for a prompt-based English assignment from the start of the year. Alternatively titled Yuragi.





	8AM School Commute

**Author's Note:**

> Don't laugh at me being a stupid weeb, please. I'm really not.
> 
>  
> 
> ...Okay, that was completely futile.

I stood still as a corpse as the train station began to explode up with people. I knew that it was a big, risky move, taking the train at rush hour, but I’d gone and done it. Ignoring my pangs of social anxiety warning me to get the hell out of bed, I had slept in for an hour. This might’ve allowed me to be a little more energetic throughout the course of the day, but by not reaching the train station early, I would have to head to school at 8 AM. On a Monday.

Rush hour. The station’s busiest time throughout the entire week. Virtually the entirety of this city commutes on a Monday, whether from home to work, shopping, school, hell, wherever. The ticket lines wrapped around the block, and the trains were like those massive cans of sardines - dozens of near-dead life forms so tightly packed it was nauseating. Rush hour is probably one of the worst situations for a social anxiety patient to be in. Why, for someone like me, who’s drenched in sweat and shivering in fear at the prospect of reading a poem in front of class, rush hour is probably _the_ worst situation.

I soon realised that sleeping in today was one of the worst decisions I’d ever made. The only way I could escape the crowd of people on Mondays was by waking up an hour and a half early, running all the way to the train station and being the first person to nab a seat in the train. That’s what I was wishing I had done right then. My little safe space, the corner of the train arrival gate, was soon flooded by people. People. People everywhere, all over the place, in my personal space; I was aware of them but nobody was aware of me - almost predatory, the crowd began to drown me. I was a mere minnow in this ocean of sharks. I stared down at my shaking hands and tried clenching them into fists to drive away the horrendous anxiety, the endless pit in my stomach that opened up whenever I stepped outside the confines of my bedroom. All these faces, so different, yet they all looked the same in my eyes. I could never be comfortable in this situation. Until finally, something caught my eye. A flash of lightning in the darkness surrounding me.

I looked up and saw this girl. Walking away, with her back to me. A bag slung over her shoulder. Slightly chubby arms, short straight hair in a pageboy cut - so odd, so rare in this restrictively narrow-minded town. Girls could only have long hair, and being anything other than thinner than a stick meant an instant ticket to hell in the eyes of the townspeople, Mom and Dad, the teachers, and well... basically anyone else who lived here. But that’s not what caught my eye about this girl.

Because when I turned around to look at her, she disappeared into thin air.

Rubbing my eyes and giving myself a good slap to ensure I was completely awake, I boarded my train and got as close to the walls as I could, only to realise that the girl was again in front of me. Her bag had a name label proclaiming _Yuragi Hamamura, 9F_ on it. Yuragi, a name that sounded so familiar yet so out of place. Now that I was in such close proximity to her, I noticed she was floating two feet off the ground.

I had heard the legends about these people since I was a child. Pale, transparent, appearing from and disappearing into thin air randomly. The ghosts of those who weren’t meant to die and whose lives were taken by accident. Unique to our town, they haunted the places where they had died - not communicating with anyone (let alone trying to seek revenge), just going about their daily routines like they once had. Unless someone else intervened, they had no choice but to embark on the same tortuous journey every day for naught. It was said that people could see these spirits by becoming just like them - lone wolves, hidden from the world, not interacting with anyone. I had always thought of this story as just a silly narration to scare little children away from potentially developing unhealthy social habits or whatever, but now I wasn’t so sure any more.

Wasn’t I a ghost myself?

 

All I had done ever since I entered ninth grade was remain lonely. Every day I got up, travelled by train to school, studied, got home, done homework and slept. Not a day had passed since I joined this brand-new fancy private school. Not talking to anyone in school except maybe when I asked my teacher if I could use the loo once, muttering “good” when my mother asked me how my day was, apologising to people who I scared or worried with an occasional public anxiety attack that I didn’t hide well enough. I didn’t even have hobbies or pastimes to variegate my schedule. All I did was think and think and overthink, something I blamed on my anxiety, but admittedly what I enjoyed and yet hated the most. Like an itch that I would scratch until it bled. Think. Think too much. Panic. Suffer.

I had clearly put myself back on this route as I stood, pondering the girl’s name, Yuragi. A Japanese word written with the character 揺. It could be read as ‘to shake, to jolt, to tremor’, but also ‘to flutter’ or ‘to cradle’. A gentle name, yet with the ability to shake up the whole world, like the ocean. This highly unusual first name went perfectly with her last name Hamamura, 浜村, which is normally interpreted as ‘village by the sea’. Though I could only see her back, I knew the name was perfect, from the way she had been stirring up my thoughts. Yuragi - the sea, the girl who made the knees of the evil shake, while cradling and protecting the good. As I thought about this, however, her name started to become more and more familiar.

Yuragi Hamamura, 9F. A flower on a desk. A couple of crying classmates. Our teacher making an announcement I didn’t listen to. Homework that wasn’t turned in. A fuzzy lock screen wallpaper on the phone of a classmate at the next desk. A lost water bottle in the cupboard. Suddenly, everything clicked.

The classmate who passed away just the day before I joined school, at this very train station. She was crushed by a train. Her life was gone, maybe, but a wisp of her always remained; even a pigeonholed social-anxiety-ridden wreck could see the fresh flowers on her desk every day, hear the whisper of her name in conversations, pick up an old homework assignment mixed up in my assignment folder in class. Just the opposite of me - I was always there, every class, every scenario, existing - but even being alive and breathing, did I even really _live_? Isn’t that just _not dying_?

I thought some more about the way she died. People first thought, apparently, she was performing an act of delinquency, until they saw the child she had managed  _just in time_ to shove out of the way of the train hurtling towards him. Not even a spare microsecond remained for her to escape. She died instantly.

She gave up her own life to save someone else’s. True to her name - protector of good, remover of evil, self-sacrificial. She really shook up the whole world.

I had gone far, far past the overthinking stage now. Could I maybe be friends with her? I was a ‘ghost’ too. She seemed so kind and wonderful. I could actually _see_ her. We would make up for what either of us missed - I would allow her a more physical manifestation and presence, something to interrupt the dismal routine she was doomed to, and she would give me some much-needed company. Maybe she would accept an outsider like me into her afterlife? She’d been here every day, following the same routine, doomed to an abysmal existence like me, I was sure she could maybe, just maybe, use a friend too.

Unfortunately, as soon as I was about to say something - anything - the train juddered to a stop and she disappeared. The crowd moved around me, but I didn’t care. They jostled me but _I didn’t care_. All I had wanted was a friend.

After getting out of the train, I walked the final stretch of road to my school all alone. I cursed myself, realising that the thought of a friend made me forget to panic about the crowd, barely even notice that it existed. I had let this opportunity slip away. I could’ve saved my own life. Who knows when I’d see her again? Who knows if I’d ever make a friend ever again?

Twelve metres away, I saw an apparition. A young girl, short, uniformed, holding her bag, walking to school. Her back to me for the third time today, I recognised her instantly. Moving further and further away from me. I saw my chance and took it.

Cupping my hands around my mouth, I called out to her. “Yuragi, wait for me!”

 

She turned around.


End file.
